People and Places in Phrases Trivia Quiz

Answer: Hobson's Choice

Thomas Hobson was the man's name, and the 'choice' in the phrase is, of course, no choice at all--you're obliged to either take what is offered you, or take nothing. A good example of Hobson's Choice (and the most famous one) is what Henry Ford offered when it came to the color of the car you were going to buy--"Any color you like, so long as it's black".

Answer: Occam's Razor

William of Ockham (a town in Surrey, now usually written 'Occam' in the principle) said that "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily", which has been simplified since he wrote about it (and might even correspond to the classic "keep it simple, stupid!") William was a Franciscan friar and is considered one of the titans of medieval philosophy.

Answer: Schrödinger's Cat

Erwin Schrödinger wasn't expecting his thought experiment to be taken seriously--his cat in the box with an equal chance of being alive or dead after a certain amount of time was meant to expose the problems he saw with quantum mechanics. But the expression has taken on a life of its own, and physicists still argue about exactly what happened to that darned cat.

Answer: Doubting Thomas

In the book of John (20:24-29), Thomas demanded to be allowed to touch the resurrected Christ's wounds, just to be sure it wasn't some fraud who had appeared before the apostles for whatever reason. Thomas is popularly supposed to be the disciple who traveled farthest in his preachings--he reportedly showed up in India to spread the Word of Christ.

Answer: Teddy bear

The teddy bear was named for Theodore Roosevelt, who had gone on a hunting trip with friends and been presented with a black bear that had been beaten and captured and was just waiting for him to shoot it, to claim his kill. He refused, the story spread, and a toymaker named Morris Michtom came up with a stuffed animal to capitalize on the tale.

Answer: Sword of Damocles

Damocles and Dionysius agreed to switch places for a day, so that the lackey could get a taste of what it was like to be a king. He enjoyed the heck out of the experience until he looked up, at a banquet at which he was being feted, and noticed that there was a sword hanging above his head, suspended by a horsehair.

This symbolized the imminent danger that all potentates had to live with, and Damocles decided that it wasn't such a great thing being a king after all.

Answer: Mae West

The Mae West (more strictly known as a personal flotation device, or PFD) was designed to keep a person afloat in water, and came in handy when one got one's plane shot out from under one. Mae West had a very generously-sized bosom (her measurements, according to costume designer Edith Head, were 38-24-38).

Answer: Adam's ale

"Adam's Ale" makes sense, because water is pretty much the only beverage the first man in the Garden of Eden had available to him. A cup of Joe is coffee, a Jack Benny means cheese and bacon, and a Murphy is a potato.

Answer: Syphilis

The proclivity to pin syphilis on some other country is possibly due to the fact that the disease often used foreign soldiers (and their dalliances with local prostitutes) as vectors. And, after all, it's a whole lot better to blame foreigners for all those lesions and chancres.

Answer: "Great Caesar's Ghost!"

In the television series "Lois and Clark", White sometimes exclaimed, "Great shades of Elvis!" According to the mythology, White worked for the "Gotham Gazette" and the Metropolis "Daily Star" before he went to work for the Planet, and he's been the name on the bottom line of the paycheck for Clark Kent and Lois Lane since 1940.